Kester's WWE Raw Rundown: The go home show for Money in the Bank featuring two proposals involving AJ, final hype for the two Money in the Bank Ladder matches, and a brief sighting of the World Heavyweight ChampionshipJul 10, 2012 - 04:15 PM

By Ryan Kester

CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, and AJ

Once again, AJ was the focus of the show and she did not fail to entertain me in the slightest. I never thought that the most exciting wrestler to breakout in a year would be a woman in WWE, but if AJ can keep up the good work, then she will certainly be that for me.

Most of this week's story was focused on providing viewers with potential outcomes for Sunday's WWE Championship match and solidifying each character's role in the story. I thought all three did their part on selling me on the show and it was one of the most effective hard sells of the top matches.

As a brief side note, I am really enjoying the fact that WWE is mentioning Punk being overshadowed. That shows that they are paying attention, and with Punk tentatively asking to lead Cena last work, they could be laying the ground work for the next chapter in Punk's story.

Raw MITB hype

The Raw MITB is a bit of an enigma to me. I recognize that the things WWE is doing with the men involved in the match are what they should be doing to sell the PPV, but that has still failed to make me the least bit excited about the actual match.

I imagine a large part of my indifference stems from how I fail to see anyone one of these men holding a briefcase would benefit WWE at this point. Unless Daniel Bryan captures the WWE Championship soon and holds on to it, there really isn't any interesting feuds between Punk and the Raw MITB participants to be had.

Smackdown MITB hype

The Smackdown MITB match feels like a standard get everyone on the card match. Most of the participants are normally residents of WWE's undercard or lower midcard, so it will be interesting to see if that group will sell buyers on the show. I'm hesitantly optimistic that they will manage to come up with something to make me feel like the show was worth the price of omission, but seeing is believing.

If this year's MITB highlights anything for me, it's that WWE's roster is paper thin. They desperately need to bring some people over from NXT and start establishing their characters because the current crop of guys simply isn't enough.

Sheamus and Alberto Del Rio

WWE Really needed to do a lot more to hype this match to the Raw audience then they did. I imagine this match will get the lion's share of its hype on Smackdown, but the few minutes that they got on Raw was not enough to make the feud feel important.

The Word Heavyweight Championship was, at one point, one f the most reliable resources of good story content. Christian, Mark Henry, Daniel Bryan, and to a lesser extent, Randy Orton, all provided memorable feuds around the belt. Now t feels like it has slid considerably with two one-dimensional characters getting crumbs of attention. The Smackdown main event scene needs a shake up and it needs one fast.

Overall Show

Last night's show was decent, but it was by no means the hard sell that WWE needed to pull to hook viewers for Sunday. There was far too much filler and comedy shtick to be found when we needed to be hearing about championships and MITB aspirations.

If you have any questions or comments or just wish to chat with a fellow wrestling fan about whatever, then feel free to email me at ryan.kester@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter at @TheRyanKester.

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